Mobile Corner: Social Integration – Good Examples

“Siri… what does good social integration in a mobile game look like?”
**ding ding** Sam, have you not worked this out by now? Daisy, daisy give me your answer doooo….

As my phone just so patronisingly put it there are many great examples of social integration with mobile applications and in this post I will showcase a few. Firstly though I think it is important for us all to get away from “bolt on” social integration. When you find yourself with a spare 45 mins please watch the video below of Paul Adams from Facebook, giving a talk at UX Weeks 2011. It really is a worthwhile watch in order to get a strong understanding of how social should be integrated into many areas of our new connected world:

UX Week 2011 | Paul Adams | How Our Social Circles Influence What We Do, Where We Go, and How We Decide from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Right, got that? Good. Let us continue (to summarise your friends influence you and don’t just shove a Facebook button onto something thinking that’s a social strategy, its not).

A few of my examples/ideas below hopefully many of you will be familiar with and although I don’t think any one has just yet nailed it these are all steps in the right direction and certainly worth taking some inspiration from.

Jetpack Joyride – In Game Photo

I adore this simple little game, so much so I have sunk over 15 hours into it. This probably says a lot more about me than perhaps the game… however I digress. There is one feature in here that I think is quite brilliant if perhaps not fully realised. When you finally crash and burn (quite literally) the score screen comes up as per most games of this arcade nature. There is one extra part though that I really like, it presents you with a screen grab of a random cool moment from that round which you can keep and share out on Twitter or Facebook. Now the incentive to share it isn’t there and I myself have only done so a couple of times but I think given a few tweeks, perhaps create an online or in app Gallery for people to show off their achievements, this could be a great addition to any gaming app.

[Enter name] with friends – Find friends easily

Zynga’s three “with friends” titles use Facebook connect to great effect by allowing you to easily see who else of your friends on the social network are playing and letting you know when a friend has started playing. It is a simple but elegant use of the Facebook connect system and one that can be easily replicated. It also at no point spams your friends with pointless updates, hallelujah.

Open Feint/Game Centre – Leaderboards

Oddly enough I am yet to come across a game that displays decent leaderboards connected to Facebook or Twitter. I would strongly recommend any dev start to look into this. However in the mean time Open Feint and Apple’s Game Center have already done this for you and really should be a no brainer when you are developing a new game. Both should drive extra traffic to your games from the hardcore mobile community and provide that extra competitive edge. Plus they have a lot of other features that should be looked at and utalised. A decent Facebook or Twitter leaderboard could potentially take this to another level.

Using the native Facebook app

Did you know you can use the native mobile Facebook app for Facebook connect in your mobile app? Apparently not many people do and the clunky web based pop up box or pointing people to the mobile web browser seems to be a regular occurance. Going that extra mile and integrating the code to push through to the slicker Facebook app is a much better user experience and hardly ever results in an error message, unlike the other two options.

Facebook – Frictionless Apps

If you missed the F8 conference you are probably blissfully unaware of the frictionless app idea, however you are probably very aware of that annoying new ticker timeline in the web version of Facebook. Well it’s here to stay and this guy right here loves it as it allows for new kind of real time sharing amongst your friends that we haven’t seen before. Building in the API to your game will allow you to create something that is far more compelling than spamming newsfeeds. If someone has given permission everytime they play your game a little note will appear in that tickerfeed to say they are playing it. Their friends could then click through to your apps Facebook page or direct to the download (in theory). This maybe a controversial new feature but it is one that has some great potential for users and businesses.

So those are some ideas that I think will do for the time being, it’s late now and Siri is telling me I need to get some rest. I hope this was of some help, below is a bonus idea that I think has some potential.

**ding ding** time to get some rest Dave.

Bonus: Dokobots – location sharing

I expect, given that very few other people appear to have played the game, many of you are blissfully unaware of Dokobots. This is one of those location based games where you have to physically move around your world to pick up items to use. When this game came out I obviously adored the silly little robots and tried my very best to help them get back to their mother ship. The key to the game was sharing your new robot friends with random strangers by dropping them off places for others to find or even putting them on a plane to other exotic locations that included Chicago, LA, Sydney and Portsmouth… yeah…! Sadly because there has never been a critical mass for Dokobots it has never been fully realised. However this idea of sharing assets in the real worl is one I think that would work very well for any gaming app. Foursquare have just released an update to their iPhone iOS 5 app called radar, this enables it to find locations that you might find of interest near by and let you know about them without you having to open the app. Why not use this technology, coupled with the idea of sharing in game items (think Nintendo 3DS’ Street Pass mode) to allow people to engage in a new way? Just a thought, if not a rather long one. I’m pretty certain Android also has this ability.